Monday, July 18, 2011

I was thinking about using this for another submission to Repaneled, but figured I have enough upcoming submissions coming down the pipe to make Anthony sick enough of me as it is. :-) Also, I have about 4-5 different paintings I'm working on at the moment and wanted to have something to post this week.

Here is the original:

I did this painting about a year ago, loosely based on the panel above, which I always thought was a really cool introduction to a character: a meteor crashes on Earth and out walks Rom amidst flames and fused rocks.

I like the visual of Rom and, when I read it as a kid, the comic book was a sort of exercise in paranoia: Shape-shifting aliens, Dire Wraiths, would kill people and take their place... Great shades of the Pod People from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"! Rom would show up and banish them to Limbo with his Neutralizer, horrifying humans who had no idea their loved ones were dead and replaced by monsters. And many probably still didn't know/believe even after Rom left. A great book when I was a kid!

Hmmm, now that I look at the painting again after a long time of it just sitting around gathering dust, Rom's midsection looks a little off to me. And maybe I should have put more flames around Rom, as well. Oh, well... I suppose it is better to let it go and say "Good enough", or else it will stay on the easel forever being over-worked for all eternity.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Here's the original cover for "Miracleman #1" by Alan Moore and Garry Leach

Before "Watchmen", a young, English bloke named Alan Moore wrote a comic which had a profound effect on me growing up, "Miracleman" (well, "Marvelman" as he was known/published in England). "Marvelman" started off as a pretty shameless pastiche of Captain Marvel (hence the "Marvel" of Marvelman) who said "Kimota!" ("Atomic" spelled backwards--sorta) rather than "Shazam!". But Alan Moore re-wrote the origin and the tone of the comic and set it in the "real" world, being one of the first in a long line of deconstructions of the superhero genre. Marvel Comics later forced them to change the name of the character in America and it was published by Eclipse Comics as "Miracleman".

It was one of my favorite books, which I discovered my senior year of high school a little over 20 years ago (holy cow, could it REALLY be that long ago?). I used to look forward to each issue, and remember having to wait a year between issues #14 and #15. While I have all the issues, I can hardly wait for Marvel to collect and reprint the issues. Garry Leach's art was great in the first story arc (and Alan Davis was no slouch, either), but to me, John Totleben's art completely blew away everyone else. John Totleben's art from "Swamp Thing" (another great book which heavily influenced me) and "Miracleman" redefined what I thought comic book art could be and made me want to (someday) work in comic books.

The first issue also had a quote from a philosopher named Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who I had never heard of at the time, regarding the "Superman":

“Behold... I teach you the Superman: He is this lightning... He is this madness!”

Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

This caused me to look up more writings from Nietzsche and, in turn, other philosophers and writers, and sparked a real intellectual curiosity in me at that time. While many of the troupes in Miracleman may seem somewhat dated now, I still look back on the books with the same edge of wonder I felt when I first read them so very long ago.

Also, I'm sure this is heresy, but I prefer the name "Miracleman" to "Marvelman".

This was done with acrylic paint on 11" x 14" hardboard.

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I also threw the logo on in Photoshop and submitted this to the great Covered Blog as a re-created cover, which Rob was kind enough to publish today. THANKS, Rob!